WHAT IRISIINIEN SAY AT HOME.—Ill.
FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
Sin,—Soon after leaving the Presbyterian gentlemen to whom I last week referred as having conversed with me in Belfast, I sought and found a genuine Orangeman, and I was not more anxious to know his opinions than he was to give me that knowledge. I was altogether a stranger to him ; he knew nothing more of my views or wishes than that I felt an interest in learning how Irishmen thought and spoke with respect to the disestablishment of the Irish Church ; but the moment the subject on which I sought information was mentioned, his business affairs came to a stand- still, and remained so till he had enlightened me as to the true Orange feeling of the North of Ireland. He said, I must know, at the offset, that the best man in all Ireland was " Old Harry Cooke,"—meaning the venerable doctor of that name,—but that the hope of Protestantism was now in "Johnston of Bally- kilbeg," the unfortunate and heroic victim of Government oppres- sion and tyranny. He could assure me that something would be done if England deserted the Irish Protestants, and the word "something," the significance of which I have been able to mark only by making it italic, he emphasized in a more forcible way by a thump on the table, and pronounced in a tone of voice indi- cative of a firm and settled resolution. He would not—indeed, could not—say what the something to which he referred would be, but the men of Ulster had resolved they would not be trampled on. The Roman Catholics were growing worse and worse every year. They could not build their chapels as other people built theirs, but thrust them forward at street corners, and other pro- minent places, in order to be as offensive as possible ; and if this disestablishment was carried, there would be no living with them. Englishmen might very possibly suppose it would not be a Papal victory, but Irishmen knew that it would be so ; and what Orangeman, he should like to know, would be browbeaten in that way without resenting it? As an Englishman, I, of course, knew nothing of what loyal Orangemen had to endure. Ile supposed, however, that I was open to reason, and he therefore wished me to read a sermon preached in Christ Church, on March 15, by the Rev. Robert Hannay, one of the champions of Protestantism in Ireland.
I had been presented with a copy of the sermon a short time previously by another admirer of Mr. Hannay, and I read it with all proper care and respect, and felt that I was reading the words of a sincere and faithful man, who had very much higher motives in what he said than a mere defence of the temporalities of the Church ; but at the same time nothing, I think, could be more un- fortunate than the reverend gentleman's selection of words, or more calculated to embitter men's minds than the ideas he has thrown out as his contribution to the settlement of the diffi- cult matters involved in the better government of Ireland. After placing the Church on the high ground of its spiritual usefulness, under the highest of all Headship, and showing that there it is invulnerable, let politicians do what they may, Mr. Hannay deals with " the Church as an establishment ;" with the Church in her relations to other Protestant denominations," and with " the Church and Romanism." Under the first of these heads we have such sentences as the following :—" By these incessant encroachments on the rights and liberties of Protestants you are shaking the faith of our people in English fairness and honesty. If you lose the faith of Protestants you will not long retain their love. By overthrowing the Irish Church Establish- ment you will stamp this lesson on the minds of Protestants, that oaths that are binding on common men are not binding on Princes. . . . and it does appear to me that when you teach men this lesson, that princes and governments may break faith with the people, you have gone far, at the same time, to teach this other lesson, and it is a dangerous one, that the people may, without sin, break faith with governments and princes." Under the second head Mr. Hannay pleads for Protestant union, on the ground that Protestants of all denominations are " joint heirs of a great inheritance of liberties, civil and religious." Lastly, he holds that the present attitude of the House of Commons is tending to Catholic endowment, to which Catholics would have no objec- tion, provided the conditions were favourable.
I should not have thought for a moment of quoting the above words, if I had not previously and afterwards found a commentary on them in the language of the Orangemen I met. The mere fact of Mr. Hannay holding and promulgating such views would be of slight importance under ordinary circumstances. But when his words fall on the ears of men already so excited that a word might set them aflame, surely the responsibility is great and far from envi- able. I had the opportunity afterwards of speaking to several decided Orangemen, and I found everywhere the same complaint of Eng- land's faithlessness to them, her true and trusty allies and friends ; the same foolish talk about the Queen's coronation oath ; the same assertion that 50,000 Orangemen were waiting—" calmly wait- ing "—to know whether it would be necessary for them to once more bulwark their liberties on the battle-field. In one case (but this was the case of a very foolish, though not illiterate man) I was reminded that there was still a King of Hanover, and that Irish Protestants had not lost sight of him. In many cases I heard Mr. Hannay's philosophical sentiment about shaking the faith of the people in English honesty, and the people thinking themselves absolved from their allegiance, reduced to plain threats of what would be done if Mr. Gladstone's resolutions were carried.
" Will we have the Church disestablished ?" I heard one man say. " No ; we will fight for it to the death." Another man, alluding to the stringent way in which the Belfast magistrates now deal with persons guilty of using "party expressions,"—a very few words being punished with 40s. and costs,—said, " I play and sing the ' Boyne Water' whenever I please, only I keep inside my own door, and no one can touch me there."
It is to men like these that the Rev. Robert Hannay and others preach sermons such as the one from which I have quoted, accept- ing and glorying in responsibilities that to a looker-on seem suffi- ciently grave and serious to make the most confident person pause. The Orangemen, with all their violence, are far from unworthy men, though they are fearfully unreasonable ones. They are not wrong in saying that they have been faithful to the Union, but they are quite wrong in imagining that the chief advantage of that faithfulness has been England's, and not their own ; and when one now hears them assert, in their high-handed way, that fairness to their fellow-countrymen is unfairness to them, and finds men of education and high character joining in and glorying in the asser- tion, one may well look with dismay on the prospects of Ireland.
Of course the use of inflammatory language is by no means con- fined to the Orangemen, but (speaking generally, and not with reference to the question now before the country) is also indulged in by many Catholics, the fiercest possible words being identified with the religious faith, which certainly is somehow woven in an extraordinary way into the daily life of Irishmen, really sincere men of both parties being led, directly or indirectly, in their par- tizanship even from the pulpit, and almost hating each other the moment the well known shibboleths have proved that they belong to rival camps.
It is, perhaps, from this intensity of partizanship, whose chief outlet for its bitterness has been in insulting words, that has come the exaggerated language in which almost every party case is put in Ireland. A foreigner listening to an Irishman's statement of grievances would at first suppose that no such heavy oppression exists elsewhere in the world ; and then, when a few cases were probed to the bottom, and perhaps found altogether fallacious, or certainly overstated, the same foreigner would, probably, be too apt to think that all of them were unreal. He would be wrong in both cases, but the fault would be less his than theirs who, for party purposes, use words that misrepresent rather than represent the wrongs, and really the wishes also, of their country. Perhaps the work of " Captain " Mackay, if it had come earlier, would have been more valuable to Ireland, in its stern dignity and soldierliness, than even the eloquence of O'Connell, if only what was gained by O'Connell could have been gained by Mackay, with the two nations at the end of the struggle in the same relative positions that they will, one trusts, occupy when there is no longer a Protestant Established Church in Ire- land ; for men who mean grim work, as Mackay undoubtedly meant it, have no time to become mere scolds ; and mere scolding, wherever it has come from, or to whatever it is owing, is one of the things that Ireland could spare a great deal of without loss to herself or any one. There is scolding without anger, in public as well as private matters ; but somehow, with anger or without it, scolding stops the way to active duties. At the Ballymena rail- way station I stopped for a few minutes to notice two women, each with a basket, blocking up the doorway of a third-class carriage, amid a confusion of tongues that seemed to threaten war. Neither woman would retreat an inch. The guard expostulated, and recommended one of them to go back " just for a minute ;" but the only reply he could get from either was that she wanted to go out, not in ; and there they remained till the carriage was
emptied by the other door. It was not a case of stupidity, as it would have been in that of two carmen in a blocked-up street in London. There was not even anger ; it was sheer thoughtlessness, a want of consideration for means and end. I am sure, if any one had said to either woman, " Press on," she would have thought that person her friend ; while, if even a tried friend had recommended her to give way she would, for the moment, have thought her friend an enemy. And the same feeling is made to run among many classes of the people with respect to the greatest subjects that can occupy the thoughts of men. Right or wrong, in a wise and just position or in a foolish and unjust one, there must be no going back, lest the going back should seem like defeat. One can understand the feeling in the case of the two poor women at Ballymena, but it is difficult to understand it in the case of gentlemen who have had all the advantages of education, to whom the knowledge of all nations and times is open, and who claim to comprehend so much better than their neighbours the true principles of civil and religious freedom. I have thought, too, now and formerly when I have been in Ireland, that the relations between well-to-do and ill-to-do Irish- men are farfrom pleasing. I have heard men of the former class speak to those of the Latter as if they were dogs. I have seen them refuse to give them any answer whatever, even when addressed in the most courteous manner, and I have thought at such times that wealthy Irishmen might themselves do much,— apart from kings and laws, disestablishment and tenant-right,—in those little ways that make up the greater part of the sum of human life, to raise the position of Ireland. A case that I noticed at Mullingar, in which a person not unlike a gentleman was addressed several times, most politely, by a poor driver, without deigning to give the man a word in reply, led me to think that the subject might be touched, in this passing way, without offending any Irishman who really cares for his country.
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